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A uniformly excellent ensemble enlivens the Royal Opera House's latest Bohème revival.

A pared back production is required in these Covid times: as little physical contact as possible, no chorus on stage, and tempi brisk and alert to keep the audience in the house for as short a time as possible. 

Christine Rice gives an astonishingly performance in an evening of four powerful chamber pieces.

This third revival of Richard Jones' production is thoroughly competent but struggles to rise above the routine.

The Bavarian State Opera avoids the routine in a powerfully cast revival of Richard Jones' building-site production of Lohengrin.

A title role performance full of depth from Terfel and a barnstorming comic interlude from Tomlinson provide some great moments, but much of this Boris fails to rise above the ordinary.

Christopher Purves bosses the show as Méphistophélès; Richard Jones' production is intelligent and carefully thought through but ultimately unconvincing.

A revival of Richard Jones’ production of Handel’s emotionally probing opera. 

Amanda Majeski is magnificent in the title role; Ed Gardner shows total master of Janáček's music. But that's not enough to rescue a poorly thought out Richard Jones production.

A committed cast make this  a beautifully performed ensemble piece in which the tragedy of young love cut short by untimely disease is compellingly put across.

Despite some dramatic frustrations, at least in Oslo, Jones' production is saved by some truly outstanding singing.

Oper Frankfurt's revival of Richard Jones's production of Billy Budd with a homegrown cast is a devastating combination of powerful music and searing drama.

Strauss' mix of bedroom farce, comedy of manners and bittersweet musing about aging is acted and sung superbly in this revival of Richard Jones' production.

The Royal Opera Orchestra produce a revelatory reading of Shostakovich’s eclectic score; a fine performance from Eva-Maria Westbroek and excellent acting from the whole cast light up the drama and farce.

After his affectionate treatment of La fanciulla del West for ENO and his devastating Suor Angelica for the Royal Opera, Richard Jones’ new La bohème is disappointingly bland.

Offenbach's vivid setting of E.T.A. Hoffmann's fantastic tales gets an enjoyable outing, with Spyres, Testé and Pudova the undoubted stars of the show.

In Richard Jones' production of Don Giovanni at Theater Basel, it was the singers alone who stole the limelight.

Richard Jones' new production is original and thought-provoking, while a commendable cast soars under the capable baton of Mark Wigglesworth.

Richard Jones's production of Puccini’s Western opera La fanciulla del West is well sung, but fails to tap in to the Wild West atmosphere of the surroundings.

Robert Dean Smith replacing an ailing tenor as Lohengrin was merely adequate but the rest of the cast and the superb orchestra made the modern production of Lohengrin in Munich memorable.

Richard Jones new production of Mussorgsky's episodic epic has plenty of strengths, but is marred by unappealing designs and rushed tempi.

A blistering performance of Suor Angelica is the highlight of this strongly performed revival of Richard Jones' 2011 production.

Richard Jones creates forceful theatre by staging Ariodante as a tale of shaming and abuse. Andrea Marcon conducts an accomplished cast and the first-class Concerto Köln.

Hansel and Gretel is often treated as a children's opera, suitable for family viewing at Christmas, but as Richard Jones' production demonstrates, it is a good deal darker than that.

With ENO having been in the news for all the wrong reasons last week,  it needed Richard Jones' The Mastersingers of Nuremberg to be a great production. Lit up by a towering performance by Iain Paterson, it is.

The Met's holiday special, Hänsel und Gretel, is a treat not only for young children but for adults with its sophisticated music, excellent singing ensemble and orchestra playing, as well as its witty production.

The Bayerische Staatsoper's production of Hänsel und Gretel is successful both musically and dramatically, but don't come expecting a charming fairy tale: This eerie staging is not for the very young or the faint of heart.

Keri-Lynn Wilson produces an outstanding UK conducting debut in Richard Jones' faithful production of Puccini's Girl of the Golden West for ENO.

Royal Opera’s first rival of Anna Nicole opens to an enthusiastic student audience. Eva-Maria Westbroek dazzles, but second time round the work seems even more burned by its clumsy libretto.

Richard Jones' new production of Rodelinda for ENO has some very good singing, but suffers from a production that refuses to take the opera seriously.

During the opening night of Anna Nicole at BAM, I found myself experiencing a case of déjà vu. New York City Opera was electrifying the Howard Gilman Opera House with a work by a living composer featuring the salacious story of a female protagonist whose life was splashed across tabloids, and at one point even featuring an act of fellatio with the disjointed music carrying on in the background.

Of the various themes that make up Britten’s Gloriana, written to celebrate the coronation in 1953 and being given a rare outing at Covent Garden to mark the work’s 60th anniversary and Britten’s 100th, the most effective by far is a sort of operatic expansion of Shakespeare’s line “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown”.

British director Richard Jones is well known for his bold, modern and often controversial takes on operatic repertoire. So I was very curious to see what surprising ideas he would come up with in directing Britten’s rarely performed opera Gloriana, originally composed in honour of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.

For a Parisian, the accordion is the musical instrument most redolent of memories and dreams. So for Bohuslav Martinů's surrealist opera Julietta, written in Paris and infused with a discombobulating jumble of memories and dreams, Antony McDonald's sets were masterpieces: in each of three acts, the stage is dominated by a giant accordion which is more or less the size of the whole stage.

Sir, Madam, do you like your opera quirky? A singing mechanical doll? A giant shaving mirror? The Evil Eye itself in a piano? Then welcome to the inebriated, fantastical, phantasmagorical world of E.T.A. Hoffmann, brought to you by Mr. Richard Jones with a delightful musical accompaniment by M. Jacques Offenbach.

One of the questions this opera poses for any director is how to link the 'tales' of Hoffmann's three lost loves together and knit them satisfactorily into the Prologue and Epilogue.

Murder. Suicide. Grand larceny. Puccini's triptych of short operas, two tragedies followed by a riotous farce, always makes for an evening of variety, with the potential for many snatches of greatness.

In case you've somehow missed the hype, Anna Nicole is the Royal Opera's newly commissioned opera about the life of Anna Nicole Smith, a girl from Texas who married an elderly billionnaire, became a model and celebrity sex symbol who received gigantic media exposure, and died of a drug overdose a few months after the death of her son.

Read our review of  Richard Jones' production of Engelbert Humperdinck's Hansel und Gretel in its 2008 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

Forte d’une tenue et d’une distribution remarquables, portée par un souci conjugué du texte et du symbole, cette nouvelle mouture de Parsifal signée Richard Jones s’empare habilement des fulgurances et ambiguïtés de l'œuvre. 

Los figurines y la escenografía austera de Stewart Laing se contrastan con el ensueño, resuelto de forma notable por Stephen Costello en una maravillosa Che gelida manina, y la réplica, ascendente pero no menos cautivadora, de Anita Hartig

Die Münchner Opernfestspiele präsentierten eine Lohengrin-Produktion, die nur bedingt dem Festspielniveau entsprach. 

Rolando Villazón bricht nach einer schwachen Leistung seine Vorstellung ab und übergibt an Arturo Chacón-Cruz. Dass die Aufführung an der Münchener Staatsoper dennoch gelingt, liegt vor allem an der einfallsreichen Inszenierung.